ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to public attitudes towards the ultimate punishment: the death penalty. For several decades social scientists have recognized the need to provide the Court with empirical evidence regarding the nature of public attitudes towards the death penalty. Public opinion plays a central role in the judicial determination of whether the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Across studies, most demographic characteristics show inconsistent relationships with support for the death penalty. Many people acquire attitudes toward the death penalty during childhood, and these attitudes become connected to their ideological self-image. Death penalty attitudes generally are based more on emotions and symbolic attitudes than on rational reflection. Another important qualification on public support for capital punishment is that it is restricted to certain categories of offenses, and certain types of offender. Many countries and thirty-four states in America allow juries to sentence accessories to a murder to death if a killing occurred during a commission of a felony.
